Executive Director

Background

The Board has been discussing the idea of hiring one full-time staff member for OSGeo. This page is an attempt to describe the responsibilities of an Executive Director for the Foundation.

Responsibilities

Similar to the role of CEO in a large corporation, the Executive Director serves as the focal point for the OSGeo. The ED manages the day to day operation of the foundation within the available resources. The ED communicates vision, policies, and status to the organization and the public. The ED coordinates activities with the various committees, projects, and members of the OSGeo. The ED reports status, establishes board agenda items, and requests decisions or support from the board when needed. The ED is appointed and removed by the board, the ED manages all other paid staff. The Board retains overall responsibility for establishing top level policy, formal process, and final approval for project acceptance and graduation.

Responsibilities include:

• Help manage communications for OSGeo - maintaining an issue tracker
• Make the Board aware of issues in the community that need decisions
• Act as a "mentor" for Committees in times of need.
• Assist VisCom in organising presence + materials for events, maintaining an event schedule
• Be an active member of the Website Committee and help work on the website and on promotional / explanatory documentation for the Foundation and its projects
• Be responsible for mentoring and assisting fundraising process, grantwriting - both for FunCom and for project / committee directed sponsorship efforts.
• Act as contact person for the "outside", receiving info@osgeo.org and routing requests to appropriate places
• Help plan and implement running infrastructure needs

Please add what you think should be in-remit to this list! The point here is to come up with a clear job description eventually; but it would be helpful to overspecify rather than underspecify this.

Support roles

These are things that OSGeo needs people to be entitled and supported to do. An ED should work with others who are taking on the following responsibilities in their own regions and be available for these roles when needed:

• Acting as spokesperson and coordinator for particular OSGeo activities
• Acting as an "ambassador" for OSGeo at community and industry events

Powers

I think they need to have some degree of spending authority. They should be able to take actions within current guidelines (for instane accept sponsorships according to a sponsorship policy once we have a policy).

The shouldn't be able to accept projects into incubation, or graduate them. They shouldn't be able to make major spending decisions on their own. They shouldn't be able to declare people charter members.

Basically, I think they need quite a bit of leeway to get things done, but they can't countermand or usurp the board or committees.

Notes

So what Executive Director would need to be is a mentor helping out when there is trouble between the bros and sisters of the Foundation.

This would be one role, but not a substantial part of the activity of the ED in my mind. I see them more often in an outwards facing role, as the ambassador of OSGeo. But also providing mundane support to the various committees to ensure that things are getting done that need to be. Drafting policies, web materials, etc.

Questions

1. Would there be any overlap with the Collabnet staff position responsibilities?

I would assume that this would be a resource to be managed and under the ED. mrl